Wall Street threatens to abandon Clinton if she picks Warren

Wall Street donors have warned Hillary Clinton that if she picks Elizabeth Warren as her running mate that her funding base there would dry up. Clinton has taken more money from Wall Street than any other candidate this election.

It was reported over the weekend that Clinton was seriously considering the Massachusetts Senator as her running mate.

Warren has built her career on being an anti-Wall Street crusader and is well known for her harsh words for the banking industry.

“The opponents of financial reform have cast the debate as rules vs. markets, that somehow anyone who believes in rules is anti-market,” Warren said in April 2015. “Rules are not the enemy of markets. They protect markets from blowing up. The real fight isn’t between markets and rules. And it never has been. It’s between competitive capitalism and crony capitalism.”

Donors to Hillary Clinton said that a running mate who threatens to reign in Wall Street would hurt her campaign financially.

“If Clinton picked Warren, her whole base on Wall Street would leave her,” said one top Clinton donor who has helped raise millions for Clinton. “They would literally just say, ‘We have no qualms with you moving left, we understand all the things you’ve had to do because of Bernie Sanders, but if you are going there with Warren, we just can’t trust you, you’ve killed it.’”

One Wall Street exec. said that picking Warren would just be pandering to grassroots populism.

“We are going to win this. Trump shouldn’t be president and he isn’t going to be president,” said one senior executive at a Wall Street bank who is close to Clinton. “Picking Warren would indicate weakness and panic for no reason and make them look like they are running scared of Trump. There will be plenty of time to galvanize the left and get them to come out. And Warren would be a nightmare to try and manage.”

Being difficult for Wall Street to manage however, is seen as a big advantage to the Democratic base, especially the younger generation that supports Bernie Sanders.

“Elizabeth Warren very effectively called out Donald Trump for cheering the Wall Street collapse because it would make him money — and that moment reminded Democrats how powerful Warren’s megaphone can be,” said Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “Whether it’s as vice president or as co-chair of the presidential transition committee, it’s hard to imagine Hillary Clinton not wanting a very large role for Elizabeth Warren at the table.”